Alongside this announcement we have pushed an update that fixes custom music crashes. Right now the virtual music visualization effects don't work but we will be working on getting them working again in a future update.

As a bonus our tilemap building tool is now available on Linux, and we've updated the Windows release to now use OpenGL. If you're making custom tracks you can grab it from the google drive folders here.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First and foremost, a much requested feature has been implemented and will be coming with 1.2.5: multiiplayer bots!

Bots are an optional setting for both Direct IP and Steam lobbies which allows the host to decide if they'll be added and set what their difficulty level will be. When enabled the standard roster of ships will fill in empty player slots.

To bridge gaps on the reverse tracks we use light bridges. They've always been really janky in that they've never had walls and some of them didn't flow well with the racing line. 1.2.5 will be addressing this with an updated design that includes walls and better integrates them into the tracks layout. In short, no more threading the needle on reverse tracks!




1.2.5's main focus is following up on 1.2.4 by updating the Model B content and giving it all some much needed love.

Every Model B track is being updated to include a pitlane, weapon pads for normal ships, updated scenery and reverse variants. We're also taking this as an opportunity to address issues with the layouts and make tweaks to the Model B ships to make them feel better to control.

Here's a look at tokyo bowl, the first of the tracks to be updated!
The track has been re-imagined drastically, with the track now being raised off the floor and the center housing vehicle parking and venues to make the most out of the huge area the bowl sits in.






There's also some HUGE news that we will be revealing alongside the 1.2.5 release, so stay tuned ;)

BallisticNG 1.2.4 is now available!

This update focuses on adding Model C specific content the game, with 4 new tracks designed around the Model C ships. All 4 tracks are free and part of the base game. Simply download the update to start playing them!

Note for Linux users:
We will be implementing a separate audio library for custom music in a future update to address crashing. We hope to have this out in the near future.

With 1.2 we updated the Model C ships to bring them up to spec with the other ships. They were in the game but inaccessible without custom tracks until 1.2 where we made them available on every track.

The Model C tracks bring in 4 new tracks designed for these ships. You can even play them with any other ship and they'll all have drifty physics!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eh9M1LgNV4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtZmNXBjDCI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N9_Dx56a68
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCVRMOmYpBI

We've added the ability to lock custom ship liveries behind campaigns. Like with the DLC liveries, if a ship creator decides to do this you will need to gold or platinum an entire campaign to unlock the liveries. This supports both offical and custom campaigns!

More information can be found here: https://ballisticng-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/unity_tools/custom_ships/ingame_prefab/liveries_setup.html

After a suggestion in our discord, we've exposed the attract mode to the custom race menu so you can setup AI only races with ships and a track that you want.

Attract mode is what the game launches when you idle on the title bar of the menu for a little bit. All ships are controlled by AI and you are simply spectating an endless race.

The game now has a controller definition for the new Sony DualSense. The controller would work before but was detected as a generic controller. This added definition does the following:

• Adds default bindings for the controller
  
• Correctly Displays Sony DualSense on the menu instead of Wireless Controller
  
• Displays the Playstation button icon set on the menu. This now also includes the create button, updated options button, mute button and touchpad press.

Rewired currently doesn't support DualSense features so if vibration is important to you then we recommend sticking to Steam's Input wrapper or Ryochan7's DS4Windows fork.

All Unity Tools (custom ships, tracks and HUDs) changes can be viewed here:
https://ballisticng-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/unity_tools/whats_new.html


Credits

• Protonic logo added to Vista's credit listing

Music

• Added Vonsnake - Combined Arms

User Interface

• The red background for beating an event in hard mode now applies whenever the event has a platinum medal, regardless of whether hard mode was actually used or not

Layout Creator

• Fixed tangent rotations being overridden when pasting shape data

Photo Mode

• Fixed ship shadows still being enabled when using the environment only draw mode

Ships

• Added ship to ship scrape particles
  
• Custom ships can now lock liveries behind gold/platinum completions of campaigns
  
• Fixed crashes related to the autopilot
  
• Fixed the left airbrake closing slower then the right airbrake on the Model C ships.

Engine

• Fixed the survival sky shader turning black when the vertical rendering resolution was low enough (menu background, CRt set to low on nova park, etc)

Options

• Added setting for different shield animations (Down, Along and Legacy). The option can be found in the Graphics -> Effects menu
  
• The framelimiter can now go down to 20fps

Commands

• Added ping command. This will return the round trip latency between you and the current multiplayer server.

Campaign

• The Barracuda Challenge is no longer mirrored

Tracks

• Added Pocono Circuit (Model C Category)
  
• Added Meads Pass (Model C Category)
  
• Added Arrivon Falls (Model C Category)
  
• Added Pacheon (Model C Category)
  
• Free tracks package updated with sky shader fix for Nova Park
  
• Fixed the aurora on Harpstone Reverse being affected by the distance clipping retro option

Gamemodes

• Exposed the attract gamemode to the custom race menu
  
• Ships now have god mode in attract mode

Input

• Added controller definitions for the Sony DualSense

Multiplayer

• Pressing menu back or right clicking in the lobby settings menu will now back out and save the settings
  
• Afterburner option has been replaced with the boost mechanic option seen in custom races
  
• The post race leaderboard now sorts entries by total race time instead of what each client and the server reports the positions as. This fixes weird issues where server latency in very tight races would screw up the results listing.

Lua Scripting

• Fixed the raw ShipTriggerInfo data being fed into OnShipEnter/Exit instead of the direct ship reference

This update is a smaller one and focuses on engine changes, new modding tools and modding tool fixes.

We're continuing to investigate issues with custom music. We don't have a time frame on a fix at the moment but we will keep you updated with any advancements on the issue.

Return to Nova Split in this virtual blueprint of the park before it was destroyed. This track makes use of our lightmapper update mentioned below to provide more vibrant lighting.

Nova Park is part of the free tracks expansions. Simply download 1.2.3 to get this track added to the Extras category on the menu.

There's even more free content coming in the near future, so stay tuned!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceklYdgY9fk




For the full Unity Tools changelog, see the what's new section of the documentation website:
https://ballisticng-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/unity_tools/whats_new.html

Getting Started Guide

Lua scripts can now be written for custom tracks! These allow you to build your own procedual animations and create new behaviours, gameplay features and modify stuff like ship physics and AI settings for your tracks.

Scripts are sandboxed and can only access what the game tells them they can access, so are safe to have in tracks.

The hologram on Nova Park is an example of Lua being used to drive an animation!

Recently myself and community member Kabelsalat released two tracks based on layouts we created for each other and this update incorporates the style into the layout creator play mode. This is also the style that was used for Nova Park.

Tracks are here, by the way ;)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2248225033&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2248229262&searchtext=

Two new terrain shaders have been added that take the base established for the Terrain 4 Blend shader and implement vertex color based texture blending.

We have also provided a .blend file with a material inside which will allow you to preview vertex color texture blending as you're painting them in Blender.

Note: These shaders require the new Encode In Tangents options to be setup in a lightmapping options script to work, otherwise lighting will override the vertex colors used for blending. See the documentation website for more details.

Lighting is now 32-bit instead of 8-bit. We haven't updated any internal tracks with this so this change at the moment is entirely for mod creators and Nova Park.

Lighting will continue to be 8-bit until you rebake it on your tracks, after which the track will be upgraded to 32-bit.

So what does this do exactly?
Up until now lighting in BallisticNG has been stored using single bytes per color channel. This provides a whopping 16,777,216 possible colors, but we can go way higher then that.

32-bit stores these colors using 4 bytes per channel instead and it effectively gives you HDR. Where having lots of bright colors would previously blend into white, those colors in the updated lightmapper will bleed into each other and make a brighter blend of themselves. This also affects lit objects like ships too.

Ship cockpits are an exception to this change as letting really bright tiles light them up can bllind you with the canopy enabled, so cockpit lighting remains the same as before.

A github repository for example code mods has been created. Right now this contains an example Grenades weapon (thanks Kabelsalat for the voice line!).

If you'd like a hands on example of writing code mods, here's the link: https://github.com/bigsnake09/ExamplesNG

The compiled and ready to use mod is also provided ;)

Credits

• Vista added to credits for contributing logos for M-Tech and Lance Systems (precision delta). You can check out the new logos in-game along the start grid for Nova Park.

Layout Creator 2

• Now uses VLM 2 for baking lighting when entering play mode
  
• Play mode now uses the new virtual environment visuals from Nova Park

Tracks

• Added Nova Park

User Interface

• Fixed the wrong tooltip showing for the speed measurement option
  
• Fixed the level up overlay not showing when returning from campaign events
  
• Fixed name tags and shield bars rendering on top of other important UI elements

Engine

• Implemented a LUA interpreter for running user scripts on tracks
  
• Lighting colors are now stored in 32-bit, removing the previous headroom for lighting where colors would end up combining into white.
  
• Survival togglers now check for empty meshes before attempting to split vertices for the survival environment

Code Mods

• Added URL to the modding folder that links to a github repo of example mods
  
• Data types from mods can be exposed to the LUA interpreter by attributing a class or struct with [ExposeToLua]
  
• Fixed the wrong directory being fed to mod registers if there are code mods that are disabled
  
• Custom huds can now be registered from pre-loaded HudComponents objects, allowing huds to be stored in and loaded from NGA files
  
• Implemented asset loading API. See the Unity Tools documentation for more information.

Note for custom ships creators:
This update makes big changes to the shield and weapon power stats and how they interact with weapon damages. This results in custom ships now being damage sponges in comparison to the vanilla ships. To make the transition easier for anybody who wants to maintain a balance with the vanilla ships, all of the updated ship stats are now provided in the Unity Tools packages as XML files. The stat prefab system now uses these too!

Bling up your ship and show off with 4 new shiny liveries! This small pack introduces Gold, Iridescent, Platinum and Psychedelic liveries for every standard ship.

If you were previously a donator in the game's Patreon days and already have the gold liveries then these new liveries are available to you at no cost!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/580180/BallisticNG__Bling_Pack/

The Unity Tools have had a few updates, see the documentation for more information: https://ballisticng-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/unity_tools/whats_new.html

We're also pleased to announce the introduction of workflow tools!
We're switching to Blender for our asset development so there's currently plenty of work being done to build tools to aid with the BallisticNG workflow. These tools are being built with the community in mind so they are free to download and to use however you like, even for non BNG related projects.

A URL shortcut is now provided in the modding folder to link you directly to the downloads, or if you just want the link now: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zeO7PK-6nkatEN6sd0rTuJKbU_lzOdTG

Right now these tools primarily consist of utilities to speed up UVing from an atlas texture, similar to what sprytile lets you do, but we'll be adding new stuff as we go.


BallisticNGs combat is a system that hasn't had much attention in recent times. In singleplayer this has been fine as the AI were always at a disadvantage and the game was always balanced around that, but we've seen clear problems with how everything was balanced in multiplayer and this update has been long under consideration.

This update focuses on adjusting combat to standardise the singleplayer and multiplayer experience, make needed changes to ship stat distributions, touch up the AI and give you a whole lot of new gameplay and HUD options.

We've also scrapped the pilot assist and replaced it with separate AI assists. More info this below!

Ship combat stats have been updated to bring the roster much closer together. This means every ship is now a lot more consistent with every other ship and firepower/shields makes much less of a difference then before. You'll still be able to bully a Tenrai using a Diavolt, but it's no longer a difference so great that it makes sense to just stick with Diavolt for that one trait alone.

Weapons have been made weaker so the focus can now be more on the race then on combat. Modes like eliminator and team race are of course still focused on combat and the scoring for these are still the same.

If you're interested in all of the stat changes, see the full changelog below.

The AI has seen a huge backend overhaul that completely rewrites how they navigate the track. This has also allowed us to also introduce new ways to control their difficulty more like how a human players skill differs, instead of just telling the AI to accelerate at certain speed thresholds to simulate difficulty.

We've also introduced rubber banding so the AI can keep pace. The rubber banding has limits so you won't be seeing them shoot down the track at lightning speeds, but you should now feel the pressure in the higher AI difficulties.

If you don't want the rubber banding we've also introduced an option to turn it off in the new assists options menu. This option is completely optional and does not restrict any of the game's functionality if it's turned off.

Finally one thing we've seen in reviews and people doing lets plays is some people not understanding why the AI take off the start grid really fast so when playing in Novice, like at the start of the campaign, the AI start boost is now disabled to better represent the understanding of mechanics that a new player will have.

We've killed the old pilot assist option and instead rewrote it and split it into three separate options, available in the new assists options in the game options menu.

These assists give you a speed handicap, disable online functionality and in some modes such as Survival won't be available.

Steer Assist: An AI will provide a steering assist. This scales with your input, so fully turning will disable the assist so you still have complete control of the ship when you need it.

Pitch Assist: An AI will provide a pitch assist. Like the steering assist this scales with your input so you can maintain manual control.

Airbrake Assist: An AI will provide airbrake tap assists. This doesn't scale to input and the AI will always be providing inputs for this sit it just flips the airbrakes on.

Utah Dam is a new free track that takes you back to Utah Project to race on an alternative circuit that drops you underground into the water processing chambers below. Simply update to 1.2.2 to get this track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq6ZTTblyM8






Music

• Added Xpand - Menu 2 to the OST folder
  
• Added Paused Playback option (enabled by default)
  
• Fixed various issues with custom track music when continuous playback is enabled

Audio

• Custom sounds are now read from their absolute path instead of their relative path (fix for regression of soundpacks not working on MacOS since 1.2)

Tracks

• Added Utah Dam
  
• Fixed survival disable and survival ignore track not working on custom tracks
  
• Fixed the AI not using racing lines on Arrivon Peak
  
• Fixed start line position tracking issues on Luna
  
• Fixed incorrect wall tiles on Tokyo Bowl and Hydrome Bed
  
• Fixed the music visualizer advert replacements scaling their layout with the screen resolution

Ships

• Rebalanced shield and weapons stats. The frontend combat stats are now also accurate.
  
• Reduced wall collision damage by 30%. (survival mode has been accomodated for so damages are still the same)
  
• Ship cannon fire rates are now determined by an option on the ship instead of being automatic
  
• Decreased threshold for ship to ship bounce collisions
  
• Rewrote airbrake drift code to properly respond to analog inputs
  
• Reduced Orbitronix's grip from 10 to 5.75

Weapons

• Removed AI to Player damage reduction multipliers and rebalanced weapons around multiplayer player vs player
  
• Increased minimum integrity threshold for the emergency pack from 10% to 25%
  
• The energy wall is no longer collidable as it plays the fade out animation
  
• The warning for AI missiles is now triggered when the AI picks the missile up
  
  • Fixed tremors flinging ships high on sections marked to allow out of bounds
    
  • Tremor damage now deals 8% first impact damage instead of 0.7 damage per physics tick
    
  • Increased tremor effective height
    
  • Increased tremor slowdown
    
  • Increased tremor distance from 75 sections to 120 sections
    
  • Reduced rocket damage from 35 to 12
    
  • Missiles now ignore gravity if they're flying and have a lock-on
    
  • Reduced missile damage from 30 to 15
    
  • Reduced cannon damage from 0.8 to 0.5
    
  • Decreased difference in cannon type fire rates
    
  • Reduced hunter damage from 30 to 8
    
  • Increased velocity loss from hunter impacts
    
  • Reduced hellstorm damage from 36 to 15
    
  • Reduced plasma damage from 90 to 70
    
  • Reduced tremor pickup weighting from 30 to 12
    
  • Reduced energy wall pickup weighting from 25 to 5
    
  • Reduced slowdown from cannons

Multiplayer

• Fixed mines being spawned with the wrong rotation

Code Mods

• All assemblies are now loaded before executing mod registers, removing the need for ordered loading if sharing data between DLLs

User Interface

• Fixed scaling issues with the custom race menu on ultrawide resolutions
  
• Added handling of an edge case for the resolution selector where Unity might not return a resolution
  
• The AI difficulty is now shown on the campaign event details box
  
• Ship information overlays now scale with distance and are correctly depth sorted

Options

• HUD and Assists sub-menus have been added to the game options menu
  
• Removed pilot assist option from the pause menu
  
• Added thrust toggle option to the controls menu
  
• Added option to toggle the low energy warning voice. Defaults to on
  
• Added option to toggle the critical energy warning voice. Defaults to on
  
• Added option to toggle AI rubber banding. Defaults to on
  
• Added options to enable new steer, pitch and airbrake assists. Defaults to off.
  
• Added option to set the units the speedometer uses. Defaults to metric.
  
• Added option to show the racer position list in singleplayer. Defaults to off
  
• Added option to show all ships on the position bar. Defaults to off
  
• Added option to show shield bars in races. Defaults to off
  
• Added option for the default camera mode when starting in zero-g (Kuiper Overturn). Defaults to rear chase

AI

• Increased minimum shield before pitting from 25% to 50%
  
• Ai now spread themselves apart more at the start of the race
  
• Reworked AI steering to simulate steering the ship instead of forcing their rotation towards where they're heading
  
• AI ships now slow down if they're exceeding the capabilities of the ship they're piloting
  
• Removed Ai grounding force. They will now fly just as high as the player can
  
• Ai now brake if they're about to hit another ship in front of them
  
• Rewrote Ai track navigation to be based on time instead of section offsets
  
• Fixed an issue where AI would use airbrakes and/or slow down on track sections like maglock drops, loops and corkscrews
  
• AI wall avoidance forces now slow the ship down and worsen the AIs racing line for a brief moment
  
• Implemented optional rubber banding

Engine

• Section floor widths are now cached on track startup
  
• A warning is now thrown to the output log when there are racing lines but none are available to be used (for track creators)
  
• Fixed an issue where the position tracking would not correctly track two ships on different routes if their section index was the same
  
• The buffer for custom music playback is now re-used (small performance boost)

Commands

• Added test_damage
  
• Added gm_timescale

Campaign

• Reduced AI speed on the base game 1v1 events
  
• Rebalanced the first half of the base game campaign to introduce experienced and expert difficulties earlier on, akin to the expansion campaigns (novice is now super easy)

Photo mode

• Player ship trails are now swapped over to the AI trail

Outer Reaches

• Fixed the pitlane on Caldera not being marked as a pitlane for the AI

A beta for BallisticNG 1.2.2 is now available!

1.2.2 is going to be making major changes to the game's balance to address a large disconnect between the singleplayer and multiplayer combat experience and better balance large combat encounters with lots of weapons going off. We're also focusing on the AI so it navigates the track more human like and is held back in the lower difficulties in a more believable way that reflects player piloting skills instead of just handicapping their raw speed.

We've started this beta so you can help give early feedback on the changes. This will help shape the final release of this version.

This beta is very important in figuring out how the changes impact a wider range of players so we strongly encourage you to let us know what you think.

You can do so in the Steam forums or on our discord, which you can find here: https://discord.gg/ballisticng

Before giving feedback please make sure you're on the beta version. To do this, make sure the version shown at the bottom right of the main menu says 1.2.2-beta.

Right click the game in your library, head to properties, the beta tab, select beta from the dropdown and then close the window. The game should then begin updating. If it doesn't then restart Steam.

The Ai have seen major changes in how they navigate the track and how the game manages their difficulty level.

Ai ships now navigate the track based on time instead of relying entirely on track sections. This results in the AI having a much higher resolution understanding of the track that greatly helps define their racing line.

We're now also using this new higher resolution understanding of the track to tweak the Ais racing line, pitch control and airbrake usage to simulate the skill of a real player instead of just capping or artificially inflating their speeds. Ai will now also work with the ships grip stat instead of using their own, which now makes picking a higher handling ship an even better option for new players then before.

All of these changes put more emphasis on a good racing line and better pitch control as you climb up the AI difficulties.

Weapons have been re-balanced alongside ship shield and firepower stats to make eliminations harder and reduce the massive gap between ship defensive and offensive capabilities.

The combat was originally built around the player dealing lots of damage to AI and the AI dealing little damage to the player. This had been the balance in the game from 2015 to now, which has proven to cause issues with Multiplayer since everybody is dealing the player damage which was insanely unbalanced.

These changes remove that weaker AI design and puts everybody on an equal playing field, while reducing the damage of weapons to accommodate.

• Increased minimum shield before pitting from 25% to 50%
  
• Ai now spread themselves apart a bit at the start of the race
  
• Reworked Ai/Autopilot rotation so they simulate steering the ship as a player
  
• Ai ships now slow down if their steering exceeds the ships turning capabilities
  
• The AI warning for missiles is now triggered when they pick the missile up instead of when they lock onto the player
  
• Ai no longer start boost on Novice
  
• Ai now begin to brake if they are about to collide with another ship in front of them
  
• Difficulty configurations are now reloaded every race so gamemodes can modify them without the changes persisting over the entire game session
  
• Rewrote AI track navigation to be time based instead of section offset based
  
• Fixed an issue where AI would use airbrakes and slow down on track sections like maglock drops, loops and corkscrews
  
• Ai are now slowed down when the game applies wall avoidance forces
  
• The angle to route entrances is now taken into account when the AI is determining the distance before it makes a navigation decision
  
• Ai are now less agressive with weapons for the first 40 seconds in Race and Knockout

• Rebalanced shield and weapon stats. The menu stats for these are also now accurate:
  
  • Shield and weapon stats are now more closely packed together
    
  • Barracuda Model A and C still the strongest shielding by a large margin but have generally been nerfed
    
  • NX2000 shield stat hasn't been changed but now has a menu stat of 1/10
• Reduced wall collision damage by 30%. Survival has been adjusted to accomodate for this change so ships take the same damage as before.
  
• Ship cannon fire rates/sound type are now determined by a separate option on the ship instead of being automatically calculated
  
• Rewrote airbrake drift code to correctly respond to analogue inputs
  
• Decreased maximum angle for ship to ship nose bounce collisions
  
• The afterburner speed increase now trails for slightly longer
  
• Reduced slowdown and camera shake from rear ship to ship bumps

• Removed AI damage multipliers and rebalanced damages to reflect player vs player combat
  
  • Ai now deal the same damage as players
    
  • Reduced tremor damage from 0.7% per physics tick to a single 5% on first impact
    
  • Reduced rocket damage from 35 to 12
    
  • Reduced missile damage from 30 to 10
    
  • Reduced cannon damage from 0.8 to 0.5
    
  • Reduced hunter damage from 30 to 8
    
  • Reduced hellstorm damage from 36 to 12
    
  • Reduced plasma damage from 90 to 70
• Increased emergency pack pickup threshold from 10% energy to 25% energy
  
• Increased tremor distance from 75 sections to 120 sections
  
• The energy wall collider is now disabled before it starts fading out
  
• Reduced tremor pickup weighting from 30 to 12
  
• Reduced energy wall pickup weighting from 25 to 5
  
• Reduced slowdown from cannons
  
• Fixed tremors flinging ships high into the air when on sections marked as AOOB

• Greatly reduced AI speed on the base game 1v1 events
  
• Rebalanced the first half of the base game campaign to introduced experience and expert difficulties more gradually

• The players engine trail is now swapped out for the AI trail

• Fixed mines being spawned with the wrong rotation

• Added Xpand - Menu 2 the soundtrack DLC
  
• Added Paused Playback option (enabled by default)
  
• Fixed various issues with custom music embedded in tracks when continuous playback is

• Custom sounds are now read from their absolute path instead of relative to fix them not loading on MacOS

• All assemblies are now loaded before executing mod registers

• Section floor widths are now calculated and cached for use by the AI
  
• A warning is now thrown to the output log when there are racing lines but none are available for the AI to use
  
• Fixed an issue with the position calculation where it would use the same section for both ships on different routes

• Added test_damage
  
• Added gm_timescale

• Fixed survival disable not working on custom tracks
  
• Fixed arrivon peak's racing lines not being available to AI
  
• Fixed start line position tracking issues on Luna

• Added handling of an edge case for the resolution selector where Unity might not return a resolution to the game on very specific Linux setups
  
• Added option to show all ships on the position bar (Game -> General -> Misc)
  
• The AI difficulty is now shown on the campaign event details box

• Added cannon type stat to custom ships under the combat settings foldout
  
• Built in ship stat prefabs now read from .XML files in the Assets/ShipStats folder and now includes all ships. You can now also add your own XML files to this folder to make your own stat prefabs!

BallisticNG 1.2.1 is now available. This update focuses on reworking the precision runs with a new simplified time attack design and opening them up to custom tracks!

• Removed scrape medal reduction mechanic. The mode is now based on time only with bronze, silver, gold and platinum medals.
  
• Grades from previous versions of the game are read as silver, bronze and gold awards.
  
• The precision delta is unlocked by getting a gold in every non custom precision run. Platinums are not required and are there for those who want the extra challenge.
  
• Skip detection in precision runs is now disabled. Skips are required for the platinum times.
  
• Afterburner is now enabled. Use of it is required for the platinum times.

Note: Precision saves now use the time to determine whether to save the file. You'll need to beat your previous best to save the time so It's recommended that you delete your precision saves (User -> Saves -> Precision) if you don't want to run into any issues.

Here's a guide for the platinum medals!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrClhavf8PQ

Update information available here: https://ballisticng-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/unity_tools/whats_new.html

All of the in-game sections have also been complete. This includes documentation on manually installing mods, using the layout creator, creating custom campaigns and using the in-game bloom and flare configuration tools for custom tracks.

We're aware of a crash with custom music and are investigating the issue. We're aiming to have a fix implemented for 1.2.2.


Music

• Added continuous playback. This is enabled by default and can be toggled from the audio menu if you prefer the previous new song every race behaviour.

Ships

• The airbrake open sound is now muted when the ship is being controlled by an AI

Engine

• Added custom track support to precision runs
  
• Available resolutions are now written to the log file on launch

Tracks

• All precision tracks updated with new bronze, silver, gold and platinum times
  
• Gave the precision tracks a slight visual and lighting update
  
• Animation scripts for custom tracks no longer update when the scripts object is disabled

Achievements

• Updated the Precision Perfect achievement description to reflect the new medal system.

VR

• Fixed the medal render on the precision run HUD not displaying
  
• Portals now render black. Because the game is configured to use a single camera for both eyes and because of optimizations in portal rendering, we only get access to the camera after the right eye is about to render, not giving us any opportunity to configure the portal for the left eye. This created the double vision that has been reported. For the time being we have disabled portal rendering in VR to save your eyes.

After just over half a year in the making, we're pleased to announce that the BallisticNG 1.2 update and the Outer Reaches expansion are now available!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi1BGUaRzb0

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1165070/BallisticNG__Outer_Reaches/

This update was originally planned to be 1.1.6 but because of the scale of changes to support Outer Reaches, we've decided to release this as 1.2 instead.

If you have been playing the 1.1.6 beta you don't need to worry about this. This is only for people coming straight from 1.1.5.

With 1.2 we've changed up the game's folder structure to better organise everything and rewrite the backend to make it more adaptable for future additions if we need it.

When you launch 1.2 for the first time do not have any files related to the game open anywhere, this includes viewing any folders. The game will migrate all of your data over to the new folder structure and it needs permissions from the operating system to do this.

On Windows, having the game installed on your C drive might result in a failed upgrade as your user account will not have permission to modify files on this drive without administrator permissions. If the game is installed on your C drive or you are unsure where it is installed, run the game as an administrator. To do this, follow these instructions:

• Open your Steam library, right click BallisticNG and go to properties
  
• Go the local files tab and click the browse local files button
  
• Right click BallisticNG.exe and click the Run as Administrator option

If you run into any issues with this then please come let us know on our Discord. We have an upgrade guide and a list of files that will help you manually update if you need to. https://discord.gg/ballisticng

You'll notice that changes to the Unity Tools have been ommited from this release's changelog. That's because we now have a dedicated documentation site that covers the changelogs and features!

https://ballisticng-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

This site is still a work in progress and we have a lot to add, which will be coming in the future.

• Added Vonsnake - To The Cosmos
  
• Added Xpand - SpaceRaver
  
• Added Xpand - Eons
  
• Added Xpand - Telomere Extension
  
• Added Xpand - Partial
  
• Added Vonsnake - Caliburn
  
• Added Vonsnake - Out There
  
• Added Vonsnake - Orbitronix
  
• Added Vonsnake - Beyond
  
• Added Xpand - Lightspeed
  
• Remastered Wyvern, Nexus, Diavolt, Omnicom, G-Tek, Tenrai and Scorpio. For soundtrack DLC owners, you can find the original versions in the Legacy folder.
  
• Music introduced in expansions are now prefixed with the expansions now
  
• Fixed Shiftdelete - The Only Way Is Up not being streamed and causing a small frame hiccup when loading
  
• Shiftdelete - Worldwide is now the song played when returning to a lobby in multiiplayer

• Added option to set which eye will be drawn in the desktop game window

• Menu rewritten from scratch to be consolidated into a single list that's generated on the fly
  
• Settings that are not relevant to a gamemode are now hidden
  
• Gamemode specific settings are now saved
  
• All settings are now saved when backing out
  
• Racers and lap settings now show the result of their settings instead of the internal values that the game uses
  
• Added options to disable any weapon in the game. This list also acts as a readout of weapons that gamemodes disable
  
• Menu progression/regression is now handled by inputs only (mouse interactable buttons are still available at the bottom of the screen)

• Added the ability to set which gamemode a tournament will use. Currently only the race gamemode is supported.
  
• Every setting available in custom race in now available to tournaments

• Added option to control the screen shake intensity
  
• Added option to toggle muffled audio when in vacuums
  
• Added option to toggle custom track music overrides
  
• Added option to toggle cockpit audio filtering
  
• Added option to control the resolution of portals
  
• Added option to disable engine sound loading from soundpacks
  
• Added options to fine tune the camera distance
  
• Added depth buffer based lens flare occlusion. It defaults to on but can be turned off in the Graphics -> Effects menu. This option only works on Windows when using DX11. Linux/Mac and OpenGL are not supported as they don't support the compute shader features needed to read the data back.
  
• Renamed gameplay options to game
  
• Moved camera settings into their own sub category in the game options menu
  
• Reworked realtime ship reflections so the high option now uses a higher resolution instead of a higher refresh rate

Code mod support
Support for code mods has been added to multiplayer when using a direct IP connection. For security reasons we have not enabled this for Steam based multiplayer. This feature is primarily focused on groups of friends who want to play with each other with whatever mods they please.

• The server can decide whether code mods need to be disabled, can be enabled or whether all clients need the exact code mods they have installed running.
  
• If the server is running in host mods mode and you don't have the same setup, information on what you need to disable and what you need to install will be available in the game's console.

• Added controller navigation to the chat box and back
  
• Added ingame and lobby messages for when players join and leave
  
• Added sounds for the lobby start countdown
  
• The game's version number is now used instead of an internal multiplayer version. This now means everybody has to be running the exact same version of the game to play with each other.
  
• Skip detections are now broadcast to everyone
  
• Fixed the lobby chat in VR not being visible
  
• Fixed damage overflow on respawning ships
  
• Fixed the game trying to access a peer using the pper ID as an array index when retrieving a networked ship name, fixing performance drops when eliminating certain online players
  
• Fixed CSF ships being viewed in the ship turntable getting unloaded when a network peer changes ship
  
• Fixed desync with ship meshes in the lobby when peers disconnect
  
• Fixed tournament races not waiting for players to load before starting subsequent races
  
• Fixed a bug with rockets where finishing a race with them would have the AI fire them but not dispose them, causing more to be spawned until the game crashed
  
• Fixed a client softlock that would happen the race after a race where the host selected and played a track you don't have

• Added support for forcing floor hugger. Use FloorHugger="True" in the mode group in custom campaign XMLs
  
• The gamemode description box for campaign events is now scrollable if the description is too long
  
• The Neon Nights finalist hardcore cup is no longer hardcore
  
• Campaign progress can bow be saved when debugging is enabled
  
• Custom gamemode settings loaded from campaign XMLs are now reported to the console for debugging purposes
  
• Added a short description next to the campaign difficulty option to make it clearer what both options are doing
  
• Fixed the Barracuda time trial events still using a legacy hard multiplier
  
• Fixed a crash that happens on game exit if you view a custom campaign that points to a non existent video file

• Unity light objects are now disabled on track load. This should provide a performance boost on complicated tracks like Basin when using lower end hardware
  
• Reworked lighting on all tracks using the new vertex lightmapper
  
• Fully remade Marina Rush. The new layout is only ever so slightly shorter then the previous one, so all leaderboard scores have been left up since the top entries are possible to beat
  
• All tracks updated to fully support the new affine texture map setting
  
• Added AOOB flags and increased the jump zone force on the gravlift sections on Atlantica Reverse
  
• Added no anti skip volume to the final raised turn on Omega Harbour Reverse
  
• Omega Harbour's lower quality ocean now uses the BNG water shader
  
• The respawn areas on Hydrome Bed's drop turn are now less agressive and provide more wiggle room
  
• Luna's introduction intercom now uses the new processing used for the Outer Reaches tracks
  
• The texture maps used for the fancy oceans no longer have texture filtering
  
• Normals are now calculated for scenery floors that don't have any, fixing a major issue caused by Unity stripping normals on track builds (which is now disabled when using the latest Unity Tools build)
  
• The transform interpolator script now keeps track of the number of ships that have interacted with it so the animation doesn't play until all ships have left the collider
  
• Spawn tile discovery is now based on the user defined start line and not a hard coded section offset
  
• The spawn position now takes into account the section orientation (upside down maglock/floor hugger spawns are now possible)
  
• When using a standard ship with more then 8 contenders, each teams ship will now spawn side by side
  
• The Metro frontend mesh now only shows the routes you will take and not the entire track floor mesh
  
• Fixed 2280 pads on the start grid on Utah Project
  
• Fixed floating 2280 pad on Harpstone's jump
  
• Fixed anti-skip issue on Hydrome Bed
  
• Fixed a skip exploit on Arrivon Peak
  
• Fixed the train on Dover not being animated
  
• Fixed the palm trees on Atlantica Forward being disabled in survival

• Updated the terrain textures on Europa to make them more icy in appearance
  
• Europa's introduction intercom now uses the new processing used for the Outer Reaches tracks
  
• Updated Europa and Yala Outpost terrain material with new terrain shader features to blend the UV scale over a distance

• Added Rush Hour
  
• Added Team Race
  
• Speed lap will now respawn the player if they're eliminated (for damage zones)
  
• Tournament scores are now based on the amount of alive ships and not the total ships
  
• Ship places in tournaments now determine their position on the start grid for the next race (singleplayer only)
  
• Idle attract mode now uses a random ship, ship livery, ship livery scheme and track from all loaded content instead of just the base game content
  
• Fixed the idle attract mode using splitscreen if the previous race played was in splitscreen

Race

• Added option to toggle between the afterburner, turbo pickup or both as the boost mechanic

Knockout

• Added option to toggle between the afterburner, turbo pickup or both as the boost mechanic

Survival

• Survival now saves offline records
  
• Survival can now detect when the ship is spinning and begin heavily damaging it as an anti-cheat measure (for Port Ares and Kuiper Overturn)

Eliminator

• Double tapping the afterburner will now give you a boost when the spin finishes. Boost combat spinning will also increase your grip through the spin for better control when exiting it
  
• There is now a 200ms cooldown to the combat spin
  
• Added easing to the combat spin animation for an added sense of weight
  
• Ai can now combat spin
  
• Fixed combat spin not working for player 2
  
• Fixed players being able to combat spin in the results screen
  
  
• Ship collisions are now always disabled
  
• Increased difficulty in the higher AI levels
  
• Reduced the amount of points given for ship eliminations
  
• Doubled weapon impact scores so events are now shorter
  
• Ships must now hit another weapon pad before a previous weapon pad can be used again
  
• Speed pads are now disabled
  
• Removed hunter from the weapon roster

Upsurge

• A zone is now worth 20 shield instead of 10
  
• Increased shield time to 1.5 seconds

• Rewrote the random weapon system to have much better fallbacks in place in case a weapon can't be given, such as only allowing a weapon that might only be available in specific race positions
  
• Weapons are now inserted into the weighting table at random positions instead of sequentially to improve the random selection
  
• Projectiles can now respond to trigger behaviours such as teleporters
  
• Projectiles now slide non player ships to the side instead of pushing them upwards
  
• The shield will no longer auto deploy when another shield is already active
  
• Fixed an issue where AI didn't recognise themselves being near an energy wall and would always fire one
  
• Mines now spawn using the ships full 3D rotation
  
• Fixed the hellstorm reticule not aligning with the camera in certain situations like through loops
  
• The ship detection for the AI rocket logic now uses a sphere cast to accommodate for the rocket spread
  
• Ai now have a stop delay for the cannon fire, making their usage of it more player like
  
• AI can now fire missiles backwards in the expert, elite and hardcore difficulties if they can't get a forward lock
  
• Ai now have a separate usage timer not affected by the aggression stat, allowing them to hold weapons for longer in Eliminator and Team Race where the fire aggression is increased further beyond its base value
  
• Improved AI accuracy with the rockets, scaled by the AI difficulty level
  
• Destroying mines with weapons will now given you the points the owner would have recieved if you had collided with them
  
• Improved missile and hellstorm reliability on non flat track surfaces
  
• Missile and hellstorms now aim torwards their targets much faster
  
• Improved projectile lockon reliability
  
• Fixed mine lifetimes being framerate dependant
  
• Fixed score increments from mines being based on projectile impacts instead of ship impacts
  
• Fixed the plasma not increasing scores on impact

Cannon

• Fixed cannons not counting towards the minesweeper stat and achievement
  
• Fixed fire rate being framerate dependant
  
• Now only updates the weapon information readout per fire (small optimization)
  
• When a ship has a damage stat of 0 the cannon fire rate will now default to the base fire rate

• Added advanced content selectors. Press the open leaderboard input bind when on the ship and track turntables to open it
  
• Added an onscreen keyboard to input fields when using a controller or when in VR. With an input field highlighted press menu submit to bring it up. Menu back, menu category left, menu category right, use pickup, drop pickup and pause will simulate you pressing space, left arrow, right arrow, backspace, caps lock and return respectively.
  
• Added the ability to edit ship stats in realtime using the F1 overlay when debugging mode is enabled
  
• Added controller input icons. This currently supports xbox and dualshock controllers
  
• You can now select the ship class and physics mod in the records menu
  
• The option menus are now automatically laid out and given automation, resolving any past and future issues with navigating through them
  
• The progress loading DLC is now shown
  
• The layout creator file browser can now back out to show all of the drives connected to the computer
  
• The lobby ship turntable now shows stats and the ship description
  
• The in-game leaderboards overlay will now download the top scores if you haven't set a score for surrounding scores to be based on
  
• Sliders now increment values faster over time when held
  
• Renamed back to cancel in the option menus
  
• Improved visuals of the code mods menu
  
• Bindings in the controls menu are now categorised for better readability
  
• Fixed the lobby ship turntable loosing the current content when a peer changes their ship
  
• Fixed seconds in the stats screen having 2 s's
  
• Fixed an issue where not having any custom ships installed would require a double tap to move past the last category of ships on the turntable
  
• Fixed the ship selection turntable using player 1's inputs for player 2
  
• Fixed the mouse having an influence on highlighted elements when it's not visible
  
• Fixed menus marked to not regress on menu back inputs being regressable when right clicking
  
• Fixed the code mods menu breaking when you back out, go back and the back out again
  
• Fixed the controls menu loosing selection focus when coming back in after a runtime generated element was selected
  
• Fixed various issues where UI elements would have the highlighted color stick when in-game
  
• Fixed various UI element issues where the highlighted color would stick when the game is paused

• Redesigned the speed lap HUD
  
• Updated the total time / lap time HUD design
  
• You now need to hold down the open leaderboard button to bring it up. An open progress bar is shown on screen as you hold the button down
  
• The notification buffer now uses the aldrich font, shows a kill feed and will scale down text if iti's too large to fit in the text area
  
• If you're using cheats or are in debugging mode the notification buffer will now let you know, in case you were wondering why stuff wasn't saving
  
• The position HUD element now updates every 100ms instead of every frame to stop the readout rapidly jumping about if you're rapidly trading places with another ship
  
• The race lap readout now keeps the perfect lap highlight updated for the active lap
  
• Improved the now plying display positioning so it can now show 2 lines without clipping and fixed the width so characters for longer names don't overflow off of the screen
  
• The notification overlay now cancels its animation coroutine and resets its alpha when disabled
  
• Improved positioning and scaling of the eliminator scoreboard, ship energy scoreboard and campaign awards panel
  
• Fixed the time looking at stats display not converting the milliseconds back to seconds when the stat overlay loads
  
• Fixed the ship energy overlays not flipping their position in mirror mode
  
• Fixed the race lap readout page switch being offset after 10 laps
  
• Fixed the wrong way notification showing in Eliminator

• Added a 2 second shield when ships respawning
  
• Added Outer Reaches liveries (unlocked by getting a gold or platinum in every Outer Reaches campaign event)
  
• Added a secret ship. We'll leave discovering the code to unlock this up to you ;)
  
• Added Orbitronix
  
• Added support for user variables (for use with the custom ship module system)
  
• Added a bounce response for front - front ship collisions
  
• All ships now have Neon Nights liveries
  
• The Barracuda Model 0 now has it's own unique cockpit
  
• Re-uv'd and retextured the Barracuda Model S
  
• Caliburn now has its own engine sound
  
• Added support for infinitely nested physics mod zones
  
• Steer sliding is now applied over time instead of instantly, adding some smoothness to the drift of ships so it doesn't abruptly cut in and out
  
• Steer tilting is now more visually coherent with how it would affect the ships rotation
  
• Floor hugger now allows full 360 pitching and no tilt zeroing when airbourne in zero-g
  
• The drag ship trails no longer turn blue when boosting and have been made shorter
  
• All ships have been updated to the newer engine effect backend and now have their own unique, thicker player trails
  
• Increased the width of the AI trails to match the width of the players
  
• The AI trail is now used when using the reverse camera in the legacy mode
  
• The controls and navigation lights are now hidden when in internal cameras and normal reverse cam mpde
  
• Moved hyperions contrails to the back side of the hull
  
• Updated Tenrais engine colors so they better match the teams primary color
  
• Secondary thrusters no fire when start boosting
  
• Updated drift ships with animated airbrakes, new engine effects, new engine sounds, reflection masks and lowered top speeds and altered handling
  
• Ship shadows now project onto scenery floors
  
• Updated the ship elimination animation and physics
  
• Updated the drag engine sound
  
• The rear chase camera no longer offsets itself based on the ships vertical distance to the track when in floor hugger
  
• Fixed ships refetching track normals and triangles every physics step when hovering over scenery floors (huge optimization)
  
• Fixed the survival ship trail remaining when using custom ships in Survival
  
• Fixed the scrape sound continuing to play if a ship is scraping when eliminated
  
• Fixed engine trail Uvs now updating if update colors is disabled
  
• Fixed ship effects being disabled when the camera switches to the race finished view and the player is in first person
  
  
• The INTERNAL_TEMPEST module is now depreciated an will be removed in a future update.
  
• Added updateColors, useBoostColors and useTurboSounds boolean variables to the drag module

• The AI grounding force now respects physics mod zones gravity settings
  
• The AI no longer have section wall avoidance when the side of the track they're on doesn't have a wall
  
• Improved the autopilots vertical movement
  
• Fixed the autopilot junction control not having its inputs mirrored in mirror mode

• Moved UserData folder to User. All of your data will be automatically transferred over. Make sure you have read the section on this above
  
• Outside of the campaign there is no longer a restriction on what content is available where. All standard ships can now be used on drag tracks and the drift ships can now be used everywhere.
  
• Added CRT filter option (Graphics -> Retro menu)
  
• Added -skipintro launch argument
  
• Added an option to control how custom menu music plays, similar to the soundtrack options (Audio -> Mods menu)
  
• Implemented a new settings backend to handle settings and preferences
  
• Implemented custom HUD support. Examples and documentation will be coming in the future
  
• Asset bundle loading for DLC and generating custom track caches is now asynchronous
  
• When splitting faces for virtual environments, the game now uses Unity's new 32-bit index buffer to allow the output mesh to have more vertices if needed
  
• Implemented affine texture mapping. This can be toggled from the Graphics -> Retro menu
  
• Implemented an uber shader to consolidate many shader types into a single source
  
• Custom content shader to internal shader translation is now handled with a database instead of having everything hard coded
  
• Depreciated the ingame ship importer
  
• Replaced the rich presence rank readout with a speed class /w speed modifiers readout
  
• Countdown displays are now rendered into the depth buffer
  
• Extra laps being a negative value now activates cheat mode
  
• The anti-skip system is now disabled for ships that are respawning
  
• Fixed Unity based skybox's not being disabled when using the ship render only mode in photo mode
  
• Fixed the skip detected sound playing for AI ships
  
• Fixed the machinima camera tool not functioning (accessed via console command)
  
• Fixed ship liveries for DLC campaigns not installed being unlocked when using the unlock all feature
  
• Fixed a major issue in position tracking that would affect the accuracy of positions on tracks like Dover Reverse
  
• Fixed the photos taken stat not being incremented

• Controller configs are now stored to an XML file
  
• Fixed only mapped inputs working for skipping the startup scenes and added mouse input support for skipping
  
• Fixed controller vibration not being stopped when the game pauses

• Added support for Steam Audio HRTF. You can enable it in the Audio -> Mixing menu (spatial audio)
  
• The track introduction voice is now played through the voices audio channel
  
• The intro FMV now respects the music channel volume
  
• Oneshot environment sounds are now processed by the audio source enumerator to ensure they have the right mixer channel assigned
  
• Removed the airbourne high pass filter from the music in 2280 (linux compatibility fix)
  
• The ship bump sound no longer plays for AI to AI collisions
  
• Optimized what sounds AI play to keep voice counts below the 64 ceiling against 16 AI
  
• Fixed the ambient audio culling not working on some tracks where the culling manager has empty object entries
  
• Fixed custom shield hit sounds not playing

• Made the background darker
  
• Added support for changing the per-node track shape interpolation method. A dropdown has been added to the node tools window to set this.
  
• Added camera orbit using the middle mouse button while there is an active selection. You can also use W and S to move towards and away from the selected nodes.
  
• Added teleporter node (press ; to toggle it)
  
• Fixed physics mod zones being wiped on undo/redo
  
• Fixed physics mod zones blocking selection inputs

• Any logs before the console is loaded will now be buffered and logged as soon as it's available
  
• Rewrote console and commands to use Mojangs Brigadier backend
  
• The console now suggests as you type and tab can be used to autocomplete
  
• The help command now uses Brigadier to list out all commands instead of relying on an external commands help doc
  
• Using the help command and then the name of a command will now show usage details on that command
  
• Reworked the command history so pressing up and down will now cycle through a stack of previous commands

• Implemented tonemapping effects menu
  
• Fixed the UI not scaling properly with ultra widescreen resolutions
  
• Fixed camera movement not being analogue when using a controller

1.1.6 is introducing a new light mapper, rewritten from the ground up with new features and improvements. This was originally designed for use on Outer Reaches, but now all of the internal tracks have been updated with general improvements and inclusion of these new features. And of course, all of it will be available for custom track creators!

Here's a look at a couple of the updated tracks. On top of updating every track with the new lightmapper, a handful of tracks have also had some touch ups to add a bit more atmosphere and improve visibility.

Outer Reaches is releasing for $2.99 on July 20th alongside the 1.1.6 update! Here's some final information and a recap of what's coming.

Don't forget to add the expansion to your wishlist! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1165070/BallisticNG__Outer_Reaches/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbBy_1IE9J4






































The plans to make mars habitable are well underway with the martian habitat project. This giant biodome offers a breathable living space and sets the standard for the first generation of extraterrestrial colonization.





Take to the skies and fly around the chilling climate monitoring station of the mysterious Planet 9. Smooth glides and vertigo await you in this low gravity thrill ride.





With the lowest gravity of the Outer Reaches planetary courses, prepare for vertigo as you drop down and climb up the dark mountainous landscape of Titan.





Building on the foundation of a previously banned weapon, Helios Descent showcases the return of teleportation technology in this looping point to point circuit descending down the Helios Solar Farm.





Zero gravity and half pipes await you in the Mars transportation hub of Port Ares, the second open space circuit seen in the AGL and the first real test of G-Teks new generation of AG technology capabilities.





Fly around asteroid debris in the Kuiper Belt with this completely zero graviity circuit, built for pilots with strong stomachs and a lust for something a bit crazy.

Here's a look at the final track for Outer Reaches, and with it the wait is almost over! With the completion of this we hope to have a release date in the coming weeks.

We'll now be adding some finishing touches to tracks, finishing off the new roster of liveries, getting the Orbitronix cockpit implemented and building the campaign.

Fly around asteroid debris in the Kuiper Belt with this completely zero graviity circuit, built for pilots with strong stomachs and a lust for something a bit crazy.

On this track your ship automatically orientates to follow the navigation guides and you pitch to allign yourself with them faster, which is required to maintain your top speed as you would on any normal track. Pitching also alters your vertical height, which is required to reach some of the floating speed/weapon pads. As you're in space there's also no drag to resist the ship, so your top speed and intensity of drifts are also increased.

Gameplay